ASIAN TRADE\\\


Challenges Persist on Asia Trade Lane


By Peter Buxbaum


What a difference a year makes. This time last year, ocean carriers were cancelling sailings out of Asia because the COVID-19 lockdowns suppressed both the supply of, and the demand for, goods. In 2021, carriers are voiding sailings because spiking demand and a glut of containers has leſt North American ports so congested and empty boxes in Asia so scarce that it’s impossible to load some eastbound shipments. Schedule delays and port


congestion are not uncommon, and carriers would normally put extra loaders into service to get their schedules back on track. But these days, fleets are fully deployed, so there isn’t the idle ship capacity to be pulled into service to address the situation. It all started in the middle


of last year, when, aſter a first half dominated by severe trade contractions, came a surprising recovery in cargo demand. Drewry estimated that global container


up demand as consumers returned,” said Jonathan Gold, vice president for supply chain and customs policy at the National Retail Federation. NRF is forecasting that imports from Asia will increase by 17.8% year- over-year in March and by 8.3% in April. Noatum Logistics, a third-


party provider headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas, found that two of its core ocean carriers voided 28 sailings between February 5 and February 26. “These blank sailings are due to ongoing schedule delays driven by the continuous global terminal congestion related to the COVID-19 pandemic,” a company announcement said, and have nothing to do with weak cargo volumes or Lunar New Year closures.


Problems Persist


Ports and carriers alike are taking steps to remedy this unusual


state of affairs, by port throughput


declined almost 6% in the first half of 2020, and then boomed over 10% through the final six months of the year. “We’ve gone from not


knowing whether we would be able to get merchandise from China to having a surplus of goods when stores were closed to having to meet pent-


executing efficiency measures and by increasing capacity and services. But Noatum Logistics expects the current situation to persist “well into the spring.” Not surprisingly, the biggest


Evergreen Line’s new F-type containership Ever Far is deployed on the South China-Taiwan-US west coast route. (Credit: Evergreen)


North American west coast gateways for Asian imports have been the hardest hit, experiencing consistent vessel backlogs and congestion. The Port of Long Beach “is


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experiencing a historic cargo surge that started in July 2020,” said Mario Cordero, the port’s e xe c u t ive dir ect o r ,


Evergreen Line’s new F-type containership Ever Forever was put into service on the Asia-US east coast service. (Credit: Evergreen)


Issue 2 2021 - FBJNA


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